All our wired futures

There was a recent discussion in Australia about the merits of the Labour Party's proposed National Broadband Network, which would see nationwide access to extraordinary bandwidth. The infrastructure for high-speed internet would be available to everyone, not just those that could afford it. The most frequent argument against their plan focussed on our current need for such a bandwidth, of which there is admittedly none. We do not need access to this bandwidth now, but we will need it. The best time to build infrastructure is before it is required.

The discussion stopped after the election, when our communications infrastructure future was decided. The Liberal Party's Fibre-to-the-Node plan will not future-proof us, it will create a system in which new tools will not be supported, and new tools will not be created. With such a small percentage of the population  able to justify the cost of fibre-to-the-Home, few will take it up, so few developers will see the point in developing high-end services, so no one will bother upgrading. The argument is cyclical.

The Labour Party NBN was a future of possibilities. In its scope it would've been a wonderland of centralised health networks, high speed government records searches, increased Australian internet entrepreneurship, and truly (most importantly) incredible educational services and resources. Under their proposal we would've been future-proof.

If you can't see the possibilities, the problem isn't the technology: the problem is you.

Cooking with Steam

There are a couple of things that re important to me. Actually, 'a couple' implies that there are actually a couple of things. There are more. There are lots of things that are important to me that I am fairly certain that most people don't actually care about. The two (of the) really big ones are education, specifically educational gaming, and digital rights management.

I've got a hard on for Steam at the best of times, and that is something I say proudly. When Gabe Newell speaks, I take a knee and brace myself for the knowledge. Apart from his recent comment on the future of gaming on Linux, there have been two other recentish announcements from the saunaed halls.

Steam has announced 'Family Sharing', which is a thing that makes an awesome amount of sense, and is distinctly different from putting your game library on every machine you come across. What it lets you do is authorise other accounts to use your library when you aren't using it. I've had a little dream about something like this for the very simple purpose of having a second 'living room account'. The living room account would open straight into Big Picture Mode (Steam Interface designed for use with TVs) and it would only have full controller support games installed on it. Everyone who lives in a house can then list the 'living room' account as their family. It essentially allows you to have a communal console for when that's whats going to happen that night.

By far the most exciting something that Steam is doing though is Steam for Schools, and its 'Teaching with Portals'. There is also a product available through the service called Universe Sandbox, which I haven't had a good look at yet, but I am super excited about. I can't actually have a look at it on my own, because I am not a teacher at a school. I know a couple of teachers, and I plan on co-opting them into assisting me in my endeavours.



EDIT: Universe Sandbox is available on the regular flavour of Steam. Even though I was referring to not have access to Steam for Schools, I assumed that there was a package deal thing going on. One can obtain Universe Sandbox through the Steam store for $9.99USD. 

Double Dragon Style Java

I haven't had much time lately, which I'm using as my excuse for not posting recently. I've been busy with some different things, a lot of which is related to university. I am actually still very busy, so I will keep this short.

There are a great many debates surrounding the best way to learn programming, and many a heated discussion has centred on the value of learning 'real programming' versus learning logic and theory in programming courses. Everyone seems to have their own opinion, and it is crazy factional. Yay, factions! Anyway, I am a proponent of the Double Dragon Style of programming education. I believe that in order to be a true master you will need to master both of the Dragons, and understand how they work together. You must move between the dragons, benefitting from the strengths of each as you progress. In this instance Greenfoot represents the logic oriented dragon, while Eclipse is the 'real programming' dragon. Both of these tools have tutorials that cover a variety of different skills and skill levels, and both of these tools are so straight forward that I would even go so far as to suggest that even early high school (maybe even primary) students shouldn't have any difficulty with the projects included in the early tutorials. Additionally both of these tools are available for OSX, Windows and the major Linux distributions. They also both use Java, which I think is a good thing. Java is a good place to start learning to program. There are a number of reasons why and why not, but the short versions tend to sound a lot like, "Java is universal", "It's object-oriented", "It's easy" and "The more recent versions handle their own garbage collection (or so I have heard)". It may not end up being the most useful language you ever learn, but it is a fantastic language to get started on.

Our first Dragon will be Greenfoot is a good place to start, as the early tutorials will cover programming logic in a simple way while still making you feel like you are actually making things, and those things that you will be making will be games. There are a lot of fun things you can make very quickly with Greenfoot. You won't be doing a lot of 'real programming', but you will be. Programming isn't that difficult, it just seems overwhelming, and Greenfoot does a good job of circumventing some of the early boogeymen. Look, the term 'real programming' is one that I have heard a few people throw around when hating on and around Greenfoot, but in my experience it is mostly thrown around by people with a more traditional programming educational experience. It is easy to be negative about logic oriented learning, because it is often overlooked, well at least it seems to be. Either way, logic is incredibly important to programming, and figuring out a way to learn it is just as important. There is a lot of surprising stupid code out there in the bowls of the interwebs (and the all of the app stores), and it is probably best if you don't contribute to the rubbish heap.

Where Greenfoot turns the process around and focuses on logic first and 'real programming' later, Eclipse uses the more traditional approach of replicating specific tasks that is common in university courses and DIY books like Sams Teach Yourself Java 6 5th Ed. This is the way that most people learn to 'program', which is to say that it will teach you how to write code and will show the solutions to specific problems. The problem with this method is that it produces a lot of terrible coders. It is great for learning good form, but it isn't good for learning to write clever code. While clever code is important, good form is also important, and for many of the projects on which you might find yourself working closing off scanners and memory management could well be far more important to you, and the people who use your apps on their phones and tablets. The other major benefit of learning programming like this is that you will learn some of the best ways of coding common functions and solving common problems, so that you don't spend the majority of your time reinventing the wheel.

I have checked through (read as 'completed') quite a few of the tutorials, and tried to check that there aren't any major oversights. That said I can't swear that learning this way is truly effective, or that none of the important fundamentals are overlooked, because I didn't learn this way. I started with other programming languages and tools, and learned logic mostly through games, but this back and forth between the two styles makes the most sense to me. In the end these are two of probably thousands of tools out there that could be used in the Double Dragon Style, and they may not be the best, but I will vouch for these two, because I am certain that they are two of the best. That and if you come to me for help, I will probably know what you are talking about and where you are stuck.

You will need to make sure that you have the latest version of Java (7u25 at the time of writing, though I read somewhere that 8 is on the horizon) and install the JDK (Java Development Kit) to use either of these tools. If you have any questions, comments or difficulties, please comment below or e-mail me at jacob dot c dot w dot henwood at gmail dot com. I'd rather you commented though, just in case I end up fielding the same questions.

Next time on United by Glue: Three Unity tutorials that anyone could finish.

Scribbleanuts Remix

It took me longer than I'm proud of to make the connection between my fascination with Scribblenauts Unlimited, its predecessor being available on iOS and my iPad ownership. When it did piece together in my mind, I swiftly, and remotely, boarded the Scribblenauts Remix bandwagon.

The lack of difficulty associated with the series as a whole came up as a point of contention since my previous post; not for me, but it was espoused as a major drawback for the franchise by someone I know. I think that this is a drawback in the same way that I think the major drawback of Lego is that it is actually very simple, which is to say that it isn't a drawback at all. This is why the game works.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't enjoy some truly fiendish puzzles for Scribblenauts, but it isn't as though I'm not enjoying myself just sticking things together and seeing what works. My limited experience is that it isn't quite as 'unlimited' as the later title, but I would hardly start throwing around words like 'restrictive' or 'unaccommodating'. I've also come to the conclusion that it is probably a great game for anyone undergoing Englishification later on in life.

Scribblenauts Remix on iOS is only $0.99, and is "designed for both iPhone and iPad", so you might be hard pressed justifying not owning it.

Next time on United by Glue: The Unity Engine

Scribblenauts Unlimited, is unlimited enough

I've dropped some words on the topic of interactive edutainment before, and it is something that interests me. I think there is a lot to be said for games in which we learn, which played no small part in my picking up Scribblenauts Unlimited.

Scribblenauts, as a franchise, revolves around the mechanic that you throw words at the game and it makes those words into things to accomplish the tasks that the game presents. The game is a puzzle game, which isn't really very challenging as a puzzle game. What the game does have is an interesting exploration mechanic. It's a sandbox. Sandbox games are pretty in right now, and a lot of games are sandbox games.

Where it really shines though is when you go off script, as any good sandbox game should. Since installation I have spent the vast majority of my total play time stress testing the game's dictionary. though there are words that it doesn't understand, its list of suggestions definitely includes things that I not only hadn't thought of, but regularly includes things I absolutely don't recgonise as words that are a part of the English language.

I totally ignored this game initially, because the video I saw for it was totally uninspiring. It's not a bad video, but I feel like Scribblenauts Unlimited really shines in what is already included in the game. The game comes with thousands of things and people with preprogrammed associations and behaviours. It also comes with a staggering set of adjectives that will alter the associations and behaviours of your things and people (they're nouns). I made Don Quixote, and he smashed my windmill. I also conducted some fairly extensive research in my gladiatorial arena, and Zeus is pretty bad-arse. So is anyone with a magic spear. So is a huge, fire-breathing, flying, robot gorilla.

While this game is crazy fun to muck about with as an adult, I feel like it really would shine as an educational title for primary students. It definitely showboats its direct learning potential as far as spelling, vocabulary and word association are concerned, but it also packs a ton of tangential learning opportunities through its inclusion of historical and literary figures, professionals, technology, heavenly bodies, animals (including marsupials), more dinosaurs than any game I have ever previously encountered, and <keep inserting categories>. The one downside that I have come across is that you don't appear to be able to change the spelling from US English.

The game is available for Windows, Wii U and 3DS, with the Nintendo titles including their proprietary characters and things (nouns). There is also an earlier title for the iOS called Scribblenauts Remix which I assume is available in the app store. There doesn't seem to be a demo for the game, which makes sense if you think about it, but fortunately youtube is rife with the things you can do in Scribblenauts Unlimited. Alternatively, you can come and play mine. 

Means? Justified!

Anyone who has been, has had or has known of a teenage boy anytime in the last two decades can attest to the life consuming talents of videogames.  Somewhere along the line of one of the aforementioned was some kind of educator, or perhaps just a doe-eyed idealist who believed that there was some positive lesson to be taken from the beast and reapplied to a productive purpose and educational videogames were born.

For decades edutainment in all of its forms has generally been regarded as a fool's errand.  The kind of thing that committees push at board meetings six months before their entire department/company is looking for new jobs as they watch whatever isn't nailed down get sold off to pay each hand that is owed.

It could be argued that there have been some few success stories in the past, like the Carmen Sandiego  games that sometimes came packed with single volume encyclopaedias, but for the most part any educational content in a game that could be be deemed even remotely entertaining was purely incidental.

Then there was Duolingo.

Duolingo launched just over a year ago, and comes at it from a different tack.  Instead of starting from a desire to entertain, it starts with those core game mechanics that not so subtly engage our pavlovian responses.  The very same ones that have been employed to encourage us to drop coin to reach the next level or earn extra skills in World of Warcraft or Farmville.  Except Duolingo has a far more insidious agenda.  Polyglotism.  Yeah!  I'm not kidding.  They actually want you to learn and use languages other than English.  In the real world!

Whatever you do, do not go to duolingo.com and sign up to learn French, Spanish, German and/or Portuguese for FREE in an addictive format that will leave you conjugating verbs in your kitchen, on the bus  and in front of your children/parents.  You'll tell a friend and they'll tell a friend.  Lovers will meet up in darkened hotel rooms to master German nounal genders while the muted tv flickers in the corner washing their multilingual debauchery in a pallid light.   This is a disease.  This is a danger to all people.  Languages other than English could become an epidemic.  Imagine the havoc that would be wrought if this kind of thing were to spread. This is the nightmare.  The one they spoke about.

Duolingo is crack for people who like to travel.




For 10 points: An english word that pluralises by inserting the 's' into the word instead of at the end.